In a wireless communication system, as a wireless terminal moves, the wireless propagation environment changes, and therefore the quality of wireless communication greatly varies. To address this, stabilization in wireless communication is sought by using error correction techniques, such as turbo coding, and retransmission techniques, such as automatic repeat request (ARQ) and hybrid ARQ (HARQ).
In addition, wireless communication at approximately 10 Mbps or more is being achieved by using high-speed packet access (HSPA), which extends wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA), and so forth.
Further, wireless communication from about 150 Mbps to about 300 Mbps is being realized by using long term evolution (LTE), which has begun to be commercialized, and LTE-advanced (LTE-A), which is a standard that extends LTE.
Note that Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2011-061464, which is an example of related art technologies for wireless communication, discloses a method in which a base station controls the communication rate of a wireless link so as to reduce the difference between the communication rate of the wireless link and the communication rate of a backhaul link, thereby inhibiting interference and reducing delay in data transfer.
Also, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-273050 discloses a method of controlling transmission of packets so as to satisfy certain conditions under which it is possible to enhance transmission probability, when packet retransmission to a mobile station has failed a given successive number of times. The method thereby improves the transmission control protocol (TCP) throughput.